Putin says US helped North Caucasus separatists against Russia in the 2000s

•  Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the US supported North Caucasus separatists in the 2000s. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images
• Associated Press in Moscow-Sunday 26 April 2015
• Russian president cites intercepted calls as he makes assertion in documentary
• Bush said he would ‘kick the ass’ of intelligence officers involved, Putin says
• Intercepted calls showed that the US helped separatists in Russia’s North Caucasus in the 2000s, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed in a new documentary in which he underscored his suspicions of the west.
  The two-hour documentary, to be aired on the state-owned Rossiya-1 TV channel later on Sunday, is dedicated to Putin’s 15 years in office. It focuses on Putin’s achievements as well as challenges to his rule – which the producers and Putin blame on western interference.
  Putin was elected Russian president on 26 March 2000, after spending three months as acting president, and was sworn in on 7 May 2000.
  The documentary shows Putin interviewed at the Kremlin in the dimly lit St Alexander’s Hall. In excerpts released shortly before the film’s broadcast, Putin said Russian intelligence agencies had intercepted calls between the separatists and US intelligence based in Azerbaijan during the early 2000s, proving that Washington was helping the insurgents.
  He did not specify when the calls took place.
  Following a disastrous war in the 1990s, Russia fought Islamic insurgents in Chechnya and neighboring regions in the volatile North Caucasus.
  “They were actually helping them, even with transportation,” Putin said.
  Putin said he raised the issue with then-US President George W Bush, who promised Putin he would “kick the ass” of the intelligence officers in question. But in the end, Putin said the Russian intelligence agency FSB received a letter from their “American counterparts” who asserted their right to “support all opposition forces in Russia”, including the Islamic separatists in the Caucasus.
  Putin also expressed his fears that the west wishes Russia harm as he recalled how some world leaders told him they would not mind Russia’s possible disintegration.
  “My counterparts, a lot of presidents and prime minister told me later on that they had decided for themselves by then that Russia would cease to exist in its current form,” he said, referring to the time period around the second conflict in the Caucasus. “The only question was when it happens and what consequences would be.”
  The latest poll by the independent Levada agency showed that the approval rating for Putin, whose third term in office ends in 2018, was a whopping 86% in April.

Kashmir’s War, on Drugs
Thousands of young, Muslim men have turned to opiates to dull the trauma of a childhood marked by violence and death.

BY MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN-APRIL 24, 2015

SrINAGAR, India — A.N. was waiting for the school bus to take him home one day in 2005 when four masked men carrying AK-47s sprinted out from a white coupe and unloaded a storm of bullets. They tore apart a man, dropping him flat onto his back in front of a nearby pharmacy. A.N. remembers the blood spilling out of the victim’s torso onto the ground behind the bus stop. He remembers listening to the sound of the getaway car screeching away as onlookers from a market started to gather. And he remembers going home that night and crying to his father, harboring a sense of panic so intense that he felt feverish.

Kashmir’s War, On Drugs by Thavam Ratna

China: My Ideals and the Career Path I Have Chosen

by Ilham Tohti

On January 15, 2014, Chinese authorities arrested Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economics professor at the prestigious Minzu University in Beijing. Authorities formally charged him with separatism on February 25, and have so far denied him access to his attorney. For years, Tohti has discussed and commented on not only Chinese policies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where the vast majority of this Turkic Muslim population lives, but also the state of Han-Uighur relations. He founded the Chinese-language website 维吾尔在线 (Uighur Online), which is meant to facilitate communication and understanding between the two peoples. The PEN American Center has recently named Ilham as the 2014 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award winner. The following autobiographic essay, written in January, 2011, provides a much-needed portrait of the man. In dealing with Ilham’s case, we demand that the Chinese government acts transparently and in accordance with its own Criminal Procedure Law as well as international norms. – The Editor

 1. My upbringing and my ideals

( April 24, 2015, Beijing, Sri Lanka Guardian) I was born in 1969 into a Uighur family in Atush City, Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). I grew up in a government employee residential compound where Uighurs and Hans lived together. My grandfather’s generation was illiterate, but my father was among the first generation of educated Uighurs brought up in New China. At the end of the 1950s, after my father graduated from middle school, he was sent to the interior of China for college.

China My Ideals and the Career Path I Have Chosen by Thavam Ratna

In a country where the leader gets 96 percent of the vote, what’s next?

Youths performing during an election campaign rally of Kazakhstan's President and presidential candidate Nursultan Nazarbayev sit behind national flags at a stadium in Almaty on April 18. (Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

By Michael Birnbaum April 26 at 11:29 AM

ASTANA, Kazakhstan — In a nation where the president won his last election with 96 percent of the vote, not even Kazakhstan’s pro-government media bothered to cover the campaign this time around.

“We know the result. It’s not interesting for people,” said Lev Tarakov, the editor of the Vremya newspaper, ahead of Sunday’s vote, which was set to reelect President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader independent Kazakhstan has ever known.

“He’ll win 95 to 96 percent. And it will be real,” said Tarakov, who was once Nazarbayev’s spokesman. Tarakov’s newspaper devoted only scant coverage to the reelection of the man who built a shining new capital city on the steppe around a tower where Kazakhstan’s citizens can place their hands in a brass relief of the president’s handprint for good luck.

Citizens in this vast Central Asian nation turned out in droves Sunday to cast their votes for the steelworker-turned-strongman who has led Kazakhstan since its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. Although the choice was for stability, stark challenges face this vast Central Asian nation trapped between its two huge neighbors, Russia and China.

Plummeting oil prices threaten to throw Kazakhstan’s resource-dependent economy into a tailspin. Religious extremism is on the rise in the majority-Muslim nation. And ethnic differences papered over by the aging president may break open after he leaves the scene, analysts say.

 

Nazarbayev, 74, was running against two largely unknown candidates, one a hard-line Communist and the other a former cabinet member in his own government. Neither opponent was visible on the campaign trail. Even as Nazarbayev called snap presidential elections a year ahead of schedule, he hinted that he is thinking about stepping aside soon. But he has squelched all possible successors – and also ordered researchers to unlock the secret of extending human life.

Now Kazakhstan faces a tricky question of what comes next.

“Nazarbayev can’t give power to another Nazarbayev. He’s the only one. For 25 years he has cut down all his opponents. He doesn’t have an exit strategy,” said Amangeldy Shormanbayev, a human rights advocate and lawyer.

Voters interviewed on Sunday said they opted for Nazarbayev because they fear a future without him. Sunday’s election was less a choice among candidates and more a societal affirmation of support for a leader who is genuinely popular, they said – not least because Nazarbayev has eliminated any opponent charismatic enough to challenge him. Some who dared to challenge him are in jail. Others are in exile or dead.

“I don’t know anyone else,” said Miras Mukhamedrakhimov, 26, an intercom installer who voted Sunday at a polling station where Nazarabayev’s image was embroidered on a carpet in the entrance hall. Inside the balloting room itself, Nazarbayev was featured twice in a single oil painting. “First of all, we don’t want the same situation as in Ukraine,” the intercom installer said. “It’s for stability.”

Outside the voting center, an exit pollster cheerfully asked people who they had voted for. All said Nazarbayev. One elderly woman wished the polling station boss a “happy holiday.”

“People are used to voting for one president. They’ve done this for 20 years,” said Mariya Lobacheva, the program director at Echo, an independent civic organization in Almaty, the former capital. “The next people are invisible. They're like Putin when Yeltsin was president,” she said, referring to the sudden political transition in Russia in 1999, when President Vladimir Putin rose to the top despite being unknown to most Russians shortly before he became their leader.

 

Nazarbayev, a former Soviet apparatchik, has forged a relatively prosperous, stable state where neighbors have been far less successful. The economy is more than 12 times the size it was in 2000, better than other Central Asian countries, both those more repressive and those more politically open than Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev managed to stitch together his country’s fractious ethnic groups and also voluntarily surrendered the country’s nuclear arsenal in the 1990s.

“I am sure that the people of Kazakhstan will vote first and foremost for the stable development of our country,” Nazarbayev said Sunday as he voted in the center of Astana.

But beneath Kazakhstan’s outward calm, unpredictable currents can flow, as was the case in 2011 when authorities killed at least 17 striking oil workers during labor unrest in western Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev called the early elections in part because he was seeking a renewed mandate ahead of expected economic troubles in the next several years, his advisers say. He has also had to fend off fears that Kazakhstan could be the next target for Russian expansion after Ukraine.

“Some elites actually advised him to avoid elections, to have a referendum instead, for example,” said Erlan Karin, the head of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies and the former director of Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan political party.

At a state-sponsored assembly of ethnic groups that held a session last week, one person after another lined up to praise Nazarbayev, who beamed at the praise from center stage.

“Eight million women in Kazakhstan love you,” one woman told Nazarbayev, doing the math by splitting the nation’s population in two. “We know you have a big heart.”

Nazarbayev himself has spoken of a need to make economic reforms that would move the country away from its dependence on mineral resources and cut down on endemic corruption. Democratic reforms eventually would follow, he has said.

“Our plan is to gradually see the move of the country from a strong political presidential rule to a combination of president and parliamentary rule,” said Foreign Minister Erlan Idrissov. But he said that those looking for “Jeffersonian democracy” would be disappointed.

For now, most voters on Sunday seemed content to hold on to what they’ve got.

“His soul is young,” said Dana Jaxylykova, an accounting student at Eurasian University in Astana, who, at 19, is about a quarter Nazarbayev’s age. “Age is just numbers,” she said.

Read more

Unlike Russia, Kazakhstan keeps a tight lid on protests ahead of elections

Russian President Putin builds ties in Moldova, Kazakhstan and Baltics

 

Michael Birnbaum is The Post’s Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.

EU removes Philippines’ illegal fishing ‘yellow card’

Fishport workers carry tunas for processing in General Santos City. Pic: AP.

By Edwin Espejo Apr 26, 2015

The European Union (EU) has removed the Philippines from the list of countries being challenged in the implementation of measures to address illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

“Today, the European Commission has revoked the warning yellow card issued to the Philippines in June 2014 regarding measures to fight illegal fishing. The EU acknowledges Philippines’ efforts to partner up with us in fighting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing,” the European body said in its website.

The Philippines was issued warning – a yellow card – in June last year for possible violation of the strict European standard on traceability of imported fish products.

The country was advised “to fulfill its commitment in deterring and preventing IUU fishing (IUUF) to avoid the possibility of being identified as a non-cooperating country in the international fight against IUUF.”

Philippine agriculture secretary Proceso Alcala immediately welcomed the EU decision to remove the Philippines form the yellow card list saying it will secure the long-term livelihood of 1.8 million Filipino fisher folks.

The Philippines exports US$180 million worth of fish products to the EU market every year.

Most of the fish products that the Philippine exports to Europe are canned and processed tuna.

The EU decision also came after the Philippine government enacted a new fisheries law that will ensure compliance to international agreements on fishing as well as institute measures to help curb illegal fishing and protect marine resources.

“The Department is pleased with this development as it formally recognizes the government’s serious efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of fisheries resource abuse,” Alcala said in a statement.

The European Union earlier granted the Philippines a GSP + status, allowing zero tariffs on over 7,000 Philippine export products, among them tuna and other marine and aquatic products.

Generalized System of Preference or GSP is a preferential tariff system which provides for a formal system of exemption from the more general rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Joint Disorders Associated with Diabetes

Diabetes Support

By Susan Renzo, Jan 2, 2015

Among the many side effects of diabetes are bone and joint problems.

There are a variety of musculoskeletal problems that can cause pain in the fingers, hands, wrists, shoulders, neck, spine, hips or feet.

There are many different types of musculoskeletal disorders, and some are unique to diabetes. The musculoskeletal system includes the muscles, bones, joints, ligaments and tendons. Problems in these areas can affect mobility or cause deformities, joint pain or stiffness, numbness or a "pins and needles" sensation in the arms or legs.

The statistical correlations between joint disease and diabetes are strong – the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that 52 percent of people with arthritis also have diabetes – but the process tying the two together has not been determined. Diabetes is also the foremost cause of neuropathic joint disease in the U.S., with the foot as the most commonly affected region.

Charcot Joint

Charcot joint, also known as neuropathic arthropathy, is a diabetes-related disorder that results in damage to lower-limb joints. The deterioration is the result of nerve damage, a common side effect of diabetes. While occurring primarily in the feet, the ankles and hips may also suffer damage. Symptoms of the disorder may include pain, numbness or tingling, and the affected joint may become unstable or deformed.

Dupuytren's Contracture

People with diabetes are at an increased risk of developing Dupuytren's contracture. Dupuytren's contracture causes knots to form in the layer of tissue underneath the skin of the palm. As these knots harden, they eventually form a thick cord that draws the fingers – usually the ring finger and the pinky, but occasionally the middle finger as well – in towards the palm. Once this happens, the hand cannot be opened all the way, limiting many activities. The progress of the disease is often slow, with many years passing between onset and full disability.

Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis causes thinning of the bones, weakening them and making them more prone to fracture. People who have type 1 diabetes have an increased risk of osteoporosis. It is believed that this happens because both disorders are autoimmune disorders. The progression of the disorder is slow and asymptomatic in the early stages. Eventually the patient will begin to lose height and become stooped. Bone fractures, particularly in the hips, become more likely.

DISH

Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH), also known as Forestier disease, causes a hardening of the tendons and ligaments, most commonly those that support the spine. DISH is associated with type 2 diabetes and is believed to be the result of insulin promoting tissue growth. While most often impacting the spine with stiffness and decreased range of motion, DISH may affect any part of the body.

Frozen Shoulder

Diabetes-induced nerve damage can cause inflammation on the shoulder joint, leading to a condition commonly referred to as frozen shoulder. Pain can result in limited range of motion, causing the shoulder joint to "freeze." This commonly affects only one shoulder at a time.

Sources: Clinical Diabetes Journals , Healthline.com and Mayo Clinic

AG will not represent Navy in abduction case

23 April 2015

The attorney general has informed the Colombo magistrate’s court that he would hereafter not represent the interests of the Navy, which stands accused of having abducted five Tamil youths at Dehiwala in 2008.

This came after the lawyer for the missing youths K.V. Thawarasa raised objections that it was unreasonable for the AG to appear on behalf of the Navy, as it has now been established the Navy was behind the abductions.

The lawyer has told BBC Sandeshaya that he also asked that the case, which was heard by the magistrate in his chamber privately until now, be taken up in open courts in the future.

Accordingly, the magistrate’s court ordered that the case be taken up in open courts when the hearing resumes on June 03.

Parents of the missing youths have filed the petitions against the Navy, seeking an order that their children be produced before courts.

Defence and Justice Ministries fail to support Disappearances Commission

• Three man Presidential Commission submitsinterim report
•  Reports that Ministry officials have been issued summons to appearbefore the Commission
•  Report on domestic war crimes probe being drafted in consultation withinternational experts

April 25, 2015 

The Ministries of Justice and Defence failed to comply with requests by the Presidential Commission on Disappearances to release a list of detainees in State custody, in displacement camps or rehabilitation centres, the three-man body complained in an interim report of its findings compiled this month.
In a press statement regarding its Interim Report, handed over to the President on 10 April, the Commission said it had made written requests to the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice to release to the Commission names of persons who were in custody of prisons, detention camps, refugee camps, and rehabilitation centres.
“While noting with regret that such requests had not been complied with, the Commission decided to notice the respective officers to appear before the Commission in terms of the powers vested in the Commission by the Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry Act,” the three-man Commission said in its interim report.
According to the interim report, the Commission found that allegations of forced disappearances, abductions and arbitrary arrests have been made against the LTTE, security forces, armed groups and unknown groups.
“Based on the inquiries conducted thus far, accountability and responsibility by these parties vary from district to district, and in the Northern Province, 60% of the allegations were levelled against the LTTE, 30% against the security forces, 5% against armed groups and 5% against unknown groups,” the Commissioners noted in their report.
The Disappearances Commission said cases of forced disappearances and abductions alleged to have been committed by officers of the security forces, according to oral submissions made by relatives of missing persons, had been reported. These needed to be referred to the Attorney General for judicial action, the Commissioners state in their report.
The Commissioners also highlighted “grave incidents” that require in-depth investigation being reported based on oral submissions made at public sittings.
“These include the Sathurukondan and Eastern University Massacres of 1990; the massacre of 600 Policemen in 1990 in Ampara and the massacre of Muslim civilians in Kurukalmadam. The Commission has recommended that these allegations be further investigated by a special investigating team to gather credible evidence against person/s responsible in order to institute criminal proceedings according to domestic laws,” the interim report noted.
The Commissioners said they had sought to act swiftly where possible to issue death certificates and compensation to families through the relevant local authorities. The three man Commission also recommends a comprehensive program for counselling and psycho-social assistance for families in the north and east.
In July 2014, President Mahinda Rajapaksa extended the Commission’s mandate and tasked its members with investigating allegations of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law during the final phase of the war in Sri Lanka. President Rajapaksa also appointed a five member Advisory Council to guide the Commission in its new mandate, including three senior international war crimes prosecutors on the panel.
The Commission in its Interim Report said that with regard to matters set out in its extended mandate, a report was being drafted in consultation with the Advisory Council. That report would be submitted as a separate report, the Commission said.
The three-member Commission comprising retired High Court Judge, Maxwell Paranagama as Chairman, Suranjana Vidyaratne and Mano Ramanathan made its observations following its conduct of 11 Public Sittings in Kilinochchi, Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Batticaloa, Mannar, Trincomalee, Vavuniya and Ampara, and discussions with various stakeholder groups.
By April 9, the Commission had received 16,153 complaints from residents in the Northern and Eastern Provinces and 5,200 complaints from the families of security forces personnel, the interim report stated. (DB)

Small steps forward? International pressure and accountability for atrocities in Sri Lanka

KATE CRONIN-FURMAN 24 April 2015

The International Criminal Court (ICC) was created to put an end to the presumption of impunity for the powerful. But in practice, the court’s ability to deliver justice free of politics has been limited, and its reach is not universal. Atrocities that occur on the territory of states that haven’t joined the ICC remain an extremely tough case for the pursuit of accountability, especially when committed by state actors.

It is a truism that perpetrators of mass atrocities don’t prosecute themselves. For states that have joined the ICC’s treaty regime, the chance of justice for international crimes, even when perpetrated by state actors, is potentially improved. The court can initiate its own prosecutions or use the threat of action to incentivize the state to act domestically. But for states that have not signed the treaty, a UN Security Council resolution referring the situation to the ICC is required to engage either of these mechanisms. And because such a resolution requires the support (or abstention) of all five veto members, referrals are rare.

If governments that have committed atrocities won’t prosecute themselves, and ICC action isn’t on the table, is impunity in these cases a foregone conclusion? Does this mean efforts to pursue justice in these cases are a lost cause? This question is not academic. While 123 states have signed on to the ICC, a significant percentage of the world’s territory remains exempt from the court’s jurisdiction. Not coincidentally, the holdouts include numerous states that have unleashed devastating violence against civilian populations. If governments that have committed atrocities won’t prosecute themselves, and ICC action isn’t on the table, is impunity in these cases a foregone conclusion? What can advocates of accountability do?  

Recent debates over post-conflict justice in Sri Lanka provide an example of what happens when international audiences push for accountability for atrocities outside of the ICC’s jurisdiction. Sri Lanka’s long civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was devastating for civilians, with serious abuses committed by both sides. Following its cataclysmic end in 2009, evidence emerged of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on a massive scale by the Sri Lankan military during the final months of the conflict. But despite increasingly insistent demands from members of the international community as well as representatives of the victim population, the government refused to investigate or prosecute the authors of these alleged atrocities.

For five years, the ruling Rajapaksa regime (itself implicated in ordering atrocities) fended off international pressure with a double-pronged strategy. On the one hand, they responded to demands from human rights advocates, international organizations, and foreign governments with hostility and flat denials of war crimes. But at the same time, they advanced an equally vehement claim that the international community must defer to domestic accountability proceedings. Whenever international pressure escalated, the regime made gestures in the direction of accountability, creating institutions tangentially linked to post-conflict justice (e.g. a commission on reconciliation, one on disappearances, and an army “court of inquiry”) deploying rhetoric about the primacy of domestic processes over international efforts. But none of these mechanisms actually addressed the question of criminal responsibility for mass atrocities, and whenever international attention waned, progress on each evaporated.

By March 2014, a critical mass of the international community was fed up with these tactics. The UN Human Rights Council requested an international investigation be undertaken by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose report was due to be presented last month in Geneva. But then things in Sri Lanka took an unexpected turn: Mahinda Rajapaksa was voted out of office in January 2015. The new government, which still includes high-ranking officials implicated in international crimes, has taken a more conciliatory approach to the international community and promised real progress on accountability. In response, the Human Rights Council agreed to a one time six-month delay in the release of the report.

It’s not yet clear how Sri Lanka will use the reprieve. Members of the new administration have stated that a domestic probe is in the works and signaledthat international assistance will be welcome. And encouraging (albeit slow) steps have been taken towards releasing political prisoners and restoring military-held land in the former war zone to its rightful owners. But the fact remains that true accountability will be a tough sell domestically.

In many ways, Sri Lanka is a typical “hard case” example of a state dealing with the aftermath of mass atrocity. International crimes were committed by states forces against a vulnerable minority population in the context of a civil war. The majority ethnic group denies that these crimes occurred, making domestic investigation and prosecution politically risky. And, individuals suspected of ordering atrocities remain in high office.

Flickr/trokilinochchi (Some rights reserved)

Refugees flee from their homes in northern Sri Lanka following a 2009 military offensive.

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This case therefore underscores some important issues for future efforts to pursue accountability outside of the ICC in similar contexts. First, and most obviously, without the threat of international prosecutions or other serious sanction, it is very difficult to compel domestic prosecutions. But second, all but the most intransigent governments are conscious of their international reputations and therefore sensitive to pressure. And third, international audiences can exploit this sensitivity to move governments incrementally in the direction of accountability.

It’s worth paying attention to inadequate domestic efforts at accountability, even when they are obviously disingenuous. If we think of accountability (and compliance with human rights norms more generally) as a continuum, rather than something that is either wholly present or wholly absent, we can see that international pressure can have important effects even when it doesn’t produce the desired result of criminal trials of those most responsible for atrocities.

Although Sri Lanka never faced serious risk of an international prosecution, it was nevertheless motivated to respond to international demands for accountability with the creation of a series of minimally empowered domestic institutions. The last of these, although still anemic and insufficiently independent from the executive, was explicitly tasked with investigating responsibility for international crimes. That matters, because whatever the new government chooses to do, it will have to improve upon the best efforts of the prior regime. So while prosecutions of those most responsible for the most serious crimes remain unlikely, a robust truth commission or even limited trials of lower-ranked perpetrators may now be on the table.

The brainless heads of President’s media mistreat Tamil speaking people

(Lanka-e-News- 24.April.2015, 11.30PM) As it is well known that   President Maithripala Sirisena does not know Tamil, so it is well known that  90 % Tamil speaking voters of the country contributed to make him the president of Sri Lanka. 

Upon the conclusion of the president’s 100 days program , the president addressed the nation yesterday in the language he knows – that is in Sinhala. It is the duty therefore of the media  secretaries, and the high and mighty  media ‘generals’ of the president who are collecting salaries under him unfailingly ,to translate that into Tamil unfailingly, the language spoken by a large number of people statistically ,so that they would also know about what he spoke, while also   translating into English  so that the international community will be enlightened.

Yet , though his speech was translated into English, it was not translated into Tamil. Even in the  President’s official face book , there is only the headline of  his speech in Tamil. The translations in Tamil were done by the various media Institutions on their own , but the president’s media unit had not made available an official translation in Tamil.

The racism filled JHU brains who are around the president are not unaware of this , but it is simply that they are pretending to be blind because they of the communal drunkenness.

In the circumstances the disappointment and disillusionment created among the Tamil speaking people, 90 % of whom voted to elect him as the president cannot be avoided. If the president does not avert this trend and steer clear of these racist elements, and exercise caution, his driving himself into serious trouble is inevitable. Indeed we are reporting this in our column because we who were responsible to chart his course to victory against countless odds cannot stand idle and watch him flounder and founder

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by     (2015-04-24 22:43:10)

Wigneswaran defends raising convicts’ issue with Modi

C.V. Wigneswaran described Premananda as a close friend.

T. RAMAKRISHNAN-April 25, 2015

The Northern Province CM recalls his close association with the self-styled god man

Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran on Friday strongly defended his action of forwarding to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a representation, seeking the release of four convicts of a case of rape and murder, popularly called the Premananda case.

Addressed to Mr. Modi, the petition was signed by five persons, including K. Sivathy and Chandradevi, daughter and wife of Premananda’s secretary Kamalananda, who was given double life term that had to run consecutively. The signatories contended that their relatives had been in prison in Tamil Nadu for over 20 years.

In an interview with The Hindu over phone from Jaffna, Mr. Wigneswaran, who passed on the representation to Mr. Modi during the latter’s visit to Sri Lanka in mid-March, said one of the signatories to the representation [Ms Sivathy] was from his State and since it was well known that he [Mr. Wigneswaran] would be meeting Mr. Modi, the request had come to him for presenting the communication.

‘No impropriety’

“There is no impropriety in forwarding a representation to the person concerned,” he said, adding that “it is up to the Indian government to act as per law.”

The Chief Minister recalled that when Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister, he did the same thing on an issue concerning fishermen. A self-styled godman, Premananda, who hailed from Sri Lanka, established ‘Premananda Ashram’ near Viralimalai of Pudukottai district in Tamil Nadu in 1989. The case pertained to the rape of 13 inmates and the murder of a male inmate, which came to light in November 1994. He was given two consecutive life terms by the Pudukottai District and Sessions Court in August 1997 after a 14-month-long trial. Six others were also convicted and given varying punishments. In December 2002, the Madras High Court confirmed the findings of the trial court and the Supreme Court had also dismissed the appeal. Premananda died in February 2011 at a private hospital in Chennai where he was undergoing treatment for liver failure. He was 59.

Asked about his description of the Premananda case as false in his letter to Mr Modi, the Chief Minister said “there is nothing for me to comment” about a case that had taken place in India.

Describing Premananda as a “very close friend,” Mr. Wigneswaran said he had known him for long.

The Army: The Operation In Jaffna; July 1979

By Rajan Hoole –April 25, 2015

Dr. Rajan Hoole

Law Enforcement and the Security Services: Politicisation and Demoralisation – 10

The Army was not used in combatting the Tamil insurgency until July 1979, following the passage of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Its manner of entry was most unpropitious, and set a precedent for the use of the security forces in what their actions rendered increasingly a ‘bloody impasse’. The President then bypassed the Army Commander, Maj. General Denis Perera, and gave a written brief to his kinsman Brigadier Tissa Weeratunga, ‘to wipe out terrorism in all its forms from the Jaffna District’ by the end of the year, placing at his disposal, ‘all the resources of the State’.

Another army officer, Maj. Gen. H.V. Athukorale, reflected later (Sunday Times, 10.9.95), “This period in Jaffna witnessed the climate being created for the launching of state terrorism… There were many things that were achieved in this ‘operation’. The Army was politicised and political commissars emerged. The Army Commander’s powers were usurped by those political commissars to carry out acts of state terrorism and torture against innocent civilians.”

General Tissa Indraka “Bull” Weeratunga

Conscientious officers who had a high sense of civic responsibility and thought of the long- term interests of the Army were disturbed. Among them was Colonel Jayaratne, who was deeply upset and communicated this to the Army Commander. General Denis Perera, who had been bypassed in the whole affair sympathised with Jayaratne, and told him that if he was unhappy he should not stay there, and Jayaratne was removed from Jaffna. Jayaratne was an officer for whom his colleagues had the highest respect. What exactly was so wrong with the ‘operation’?

There was a law and order problem in the North. Banks were being robbed and policemen and so-called ‘traitors’ were being killed. But it had a political dimension in the grievances of the Tamil minority. Bank robberies and killings were not to the liking of the Tamil people. The people had shown their dislike of killing by a record attendance at the funeral of Alfred Duraiyappah, the murdered Jaffna Mayor. They showed their dislike of lawlessness by helping the Police give chase to Sivakumaran after a robbery, and apprehending him. But the sense of oppression led increasingly to admiration for the militant youth. Even if the people doubted the ‘Boys’ being freedom fighters, they were reluctant to regard them as criminals. They felt that the Government had no moral right to demand that the people betray them. Yet in those days, before July 1983, it was a manageable problem. It was not until 1985 that the security forces faced problems of mobility in Jaffna.                                                  Read More    

Indian Gods and Lankan Leaders – Upul Joseph Fernando

25/04/2015

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who made a sudden visit to Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple in India last week made an offering of 77 kilos of sandalwood.

Mahinda also visited this Temple after his 2005 presidential victory and got onto a weighing machine. That photograph went viral on the electronic media.

Ranil visited the historic Temple at a time the 19th Amendment was to be passed in Parliament. It was not clear whether he went to make an offering to obtain the blessings of Lord Sri Krishna to get the 19th Amendment passed without problems. Mahinda Rajapaksa also visited Kovils and Temples in India during the previous regime. He even sought security from the Indian Government to visit Kovils and Temples in Tamil Nadu amidst stiff opposition to him in that State. Having submitted nominations for the January presidential election, Mahinda visited temples there to seek the blessings to win the election. But he lost.

Ranil too, visited India to worship temples after the last presidential election was announced. Whenever, he met resistance within his own party, Ranil always went to India to seek blessings. Hence, Ranil may believe that the Gods helped him to protect his party leadership and also become Prime Minister after Maithri won the presidential election.

Those who are opposed to Mahinda, Ranil and other prominent politicians who visited India for blessings say the Gods never favoured these Sri Lankan politicians. These segments in Tamil Nadu protested in public stating that these Sri Lankan leaders ignored the Tamils during the war period. They continued to display their dissatisfaction over these Sri Lankan leaders who visited Tamil Nadu and India to obtain blessings of the Gods.

Slain LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran’s biography noted that he too, was a devotee of Meenakshi God’s temple. He had also embraced Lord Murugan with much faith. The biography states that, while Prabhakaran hid in India to evade arrest here, he had regularly visited the Temple of Lord Murugan. The media reported that whenever Mahinda went to India to seek blessings of Gods, he too visited Lord Murugan’s Temple to obtain blessings. Though Mahinda and Prabhakaran sought the help of Lord Murugan to win the war, it appeared that Lord Murugan gave an ear to the plea of Mahinda. LTTE literature states that during the war period, the LTTE offered animals to Mother Kaali as sacrifices. That had been performed as a ritual before every LTTE operation against the armed forces. It is not clear whether Mahinda banned sacrifice of animals in Kaali Kovils in the South as a response to Prabhakaran’s actions.

Yaaga Pooja
Former Minister Mervyn Silva took the lead in the direction to halt animal sacrifices at Kaali Kovils. It is learnt that astrologers have told Mahinda that his defeat at the presidential election was caused by the decision to halt animal sacrifices at Kovils of Mother Kaali. It is revealed that Mahinda had visited the Mother Kaali’s kovil at Munneswaran in the wee hours recently to perform a Yaaga Pooja. Mahinda who never stepped into a Kovil of Mother Kaali as President has suddenly thought of Mother Kaali after the defeat. Usually the people in the North and East have faith in Hindu Gods. Hinduism is their religion. During the protracted war period they would have prayed to those Gods about their sad plight because they had faith to obtain relief. If the Sri Lankan leaders could offer solutions to the grievances of these Tamils, they need not go to India for blessings from Indian temples.

If they resolve those grievances, those Gods would naturally bless these leaders in addition to assistance from Indian leaders in New Delhi.

When Ranil halted the war in 2002 through the ceasefire agreement, Indian astrologers claimed that Ranil collected much merit through that act. But within a brief period, Ranil lost his premiership. After twelve long years he has assumed office as Prime Minister again. It would have been better if the weight of the Tamil problems was heavier to Ranil than the 77 kilos of sandalwood he offered at the Guruvayur Temple.

(photo: The Hindu)

- Ceylon Today